598 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



engaged in these various arts and manufactures and executed the 

 work. In Sparta citizens were rigorously forbidden to work at 

 trades, and this aristocratic prejudice has always existed to a greater 

 or less degree throughout Greece. Herodotus (II, 167) expressly 

 says: 



Among the barbarians those who learn the mechanical arts and even their chil- 

 dren are regarded as the lowest class of citizens. On the other hand, they esteem as 

 the most noble those who engage in no trade whatever and especially those who 

 have devoted themselves to the profession of arms. All Greeks, and particularly the 

 Lacedemonians, have been schooled in these principles. 



The factories where free men chiefly were employed were all small 

 with 10 workmen at the most. An inscription at Athens giving a 

 list of workmen shows that in the fifth century, the grand century, 

 the free workmen were still in the majority, for this list includes 24 

 Athenians, 40 meteques (foreigners from other Grecian cities), and 

 only 17 slaves. The majority of these free men were for the most 

 part foreigners, without rights of citizenship, whom misfortune had 

 driven from their homes. In a workshop at the sanctuary of Eleusis 

 there were 39 meteques, 36 Athenians, and 12 barbarians or wan- 

 dering workmen, who came to offer their services, but not slaves. 

 The period of the fifth century was the most auspicious and the 

 most brilliant in ancient Greece. Agriculture was then still pre- 

 dominant in Attica. 



But that condition was completely overturned. The philoso- 

 phers themselves turned aside the Greeks from manual labor. 

 Their teaching as well as their example tended to create an intellec- 

 tual elite, an aristocracy of mind, much above the mass. But they 

 had overreached their mark in inspiring a contempt for work. To 

 believe one's self too much above others destroys the equilibrium. 



Socrates himself did nothing. He did not even write his moral 

 teachings. While preaching a contempt for sordid gain, he did not 

 study the subject close enough to understand the need of being busy, 

 everything censuring idleness. 



In the professions that tend toward wealth Plato could see only 

 selfisliness, baseness of spirit, the degrading of the finer sensibilities. 

 In such appreciation there is a moral element of a delicate and ele- 

 vating nature. But Plato, like Aristotle, came to see in commerce 

 and industry two evils of society. His moral ideal was joined ^dth 

 that ideal of simplicity of primitive epochs when the worst brigand- 

 age, viewed from afar, was colored with heroic Adrtue. "If," said 

 he, "astronomers, very modest magistrates charged with the polic- 

 ing of streets and dwellings, with cleanliness and good order, should 

 perceive anyone of their number neglecting the study of virtue to 

 practice a trade, they should overwhelm him with reproaches and 



